Ideate Explorer

Resolve to keep your RVTs clean and well oiled in 2012. Use Ideate Explorer for Revit to take on these essential tasks:

Review/Cleanup Imports. Unused Import files (DWG/DGN) are cluttering your RVT and impacting performance. Get rid of them now while you can.

Assure that only Company Standard Text and Dimensions are being used. It’s easy to use the wrong style of there are too many to choose from. Prevent printing headaches and make sure only approved styles are used.
Audit keynote and revision usage. What’s been keynoted? Where are the revision clouds? You’re in charge of quality control – you need to know these answers.
Review the model and detail lines. Improper use of model lines or selecting the wrong detail line will surely result in a printing mishap. Audit now.
Audit the workset organization. Controlling performance and visibility through worksets can work well, until objects are misidentified. Review workset assignments quickly to nip these problems in the bud.

While not a complete list, it’s a great starting point. Start the year off right by auditing your projects today with Ideate Explorer for Revit.

Glynnis Patterson,
N.C.A.R.B. – Director of Services
Glynnis is a Registered Architect and has worked within the BIM industry since 1998. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, she has worked as an architect, educator and construction site manager. Glynnis is currently the Director of Development Services at Ideate, Inc. and continues to work with AEC clients across the nation, developing, and implementing best practices solutions. In her spare time Glynnis is a member of the Morristown Environmental Commission and builds Lego projects. @GVPinNJ

Get it. Know it. Use it.

This was a great question that our Support team fielded last week about Keynotes. Ideate Explorer for Revit can easily handle this kind of request along with finding other hard-to-find items such as Revision Clouds, hidden DWG Imports, Model Lines, Text.

Question: Can Ideate Explorer for Revit tell you where keynotes are used? It would be very handy to see a list with each keynote and all the sheets it’s used on.

Answer: Ideate Explorer for Revit can help you find all the keynotes. Here’s a step-by-step on how to find and review your keynotes.

Index the “Entire Project” as shown; with Ideate Explorer 2012 this should take less than one minute, even with files that are 250 MB+.
Select the Checkbox next to the “Keynote Tags” as shown. This is the same as selecting every Keynote Tag in the project.
Select “Current Selection” as shown. This will clear the Results window of extraneous information.
Change the View dropdown option from “Category” to “Instance List” as shown. At this point you can double-click on each item and Ideate Explorer for Revit will open up the view for reviewing/editing purposes OR you can export the list.
To Export this list, right-click and select “Export to Excel.”

Give it a try! Download a free Trial of Ideate Explorer for Revit. What’s in your RVT?!

Glynnis Patterson,
N.C.A.R.B. – Director of Services
Glynnis is a Registered Architect and has worked within the BIM industry since 1998. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, she has worked as an architect, educator and construction site manager. Glynnis is currently the Director of Development Services at Ideate, Inc. and continues to work with AEC clients across the nation, developing, and implementing best practices solutions. In her spare time Glynnis is a member of the Morristown Environmental Commission and builds Lego projects. @GVPinNJ

Get it. Know it. Use it.

Recently I spoke with a client who was wanting to search for elements within their Revit model that belonged to a level. Through the use of Ideate Explorer for Revit we were able to search in the entire project, for elements that belonged to a Level, and the search was specifically for walls. The following steps are used to find walls in the image:

Step 1 Indicates that you are looking in the entire Project for the element(s).
Step 2 Select that you want to look for items on a specific level.
Step 3 Indicates what is being searched for. (this can be a category, or a keyword such as the word “Brick” in a wall, window, or family name.

Once the item is selected, use the Tools menu to show where the element is located in the project. Happy searching! If you would like to make suggestions on what you would like to see in future releases of Ideate Explorer for Revit send us your ideas.

Ron Palma
AEC Solutions Application Specialist
Ron has 23+ years of experience in the AEC industry as a designer, lead project designer, trainer and CAD manager. His instructional background includes Autodesk Certified Instructor, trainer, support technician, educator at Portland Community College and Clackamas Community College, and a U.S. Army certified instructor. Follow Ron @RonPalmaAEC.

Get it. Know it. Use it.

Do you have “Rogue” Levels in Revit? You may have rogue levels in the project that are not active views, but show up as elevation options when creating elements such as Walls, Columns, or Floor. Additionally if creating a new floor plan these rogue levels may show up.

You may have tried to find them by creating new elevations or sections and turning off the cropping of the view, but still cannot find them. What do you do??

Use Ideate Explorer for Revit of course! Our Ideate Explorer for Revit 2012 (as do our earlier versions of this great program) allows you to search the entire model for these rogue levels. Select them, then use the Tools menu to Show where these elements are located in your project.

Now that they are selected, simply delete them from the project. You can find more information on Ideate Explorer for Revit by visiting our website.

Ron Palma
AEC Solutions Application Specialist
Ron has 23+ years of experience in the AEC industry as a designer, lead project designer, trainer and CAD manager. His instructional background includes Autodesk Certified Instructor, trainer, support technician, educator at Portland Community College and Clackamas Community College, and a U.S. Army certified instructor. Follow Ron @RonPalmaAEC.

Get it. Know it. Use it.

Imagine this, a Revit file comes from a project member. You open your project and it loads as it always has. You leave your starting view to a floor plan only to have your heart sink. Where is the link? It was there yesterday. Your anger and anxiety level is now setting your blood pressure to dangerous levels. Take a deep breath, it’s ok, we’ll help you find that lost link.

I have two options below for you. The more complex is the first option. The second option is the easier workflow. This is one time that skipping to the end of an article isn’t a bad thing.

Option 1

First, verify in the Project Browser its loaded.

Right click on the linked file name.

In the shortcut menu select Select All Instance/In entire project

You’ll see the ribbon has a new tab Modify/RVT Links

Don’t click ESC.

Go to the Manage tab/to the ID’s of Selection

Copy the number that comes up in the dialog box

Click OK

Click the button just below where you were called Select by ID and paste the number from the last step and click Show.

This will take you to a view of the linked file. Now you can see if it’s changed in elevation or if it’s located at a different location on the site.

Now, for Option 2

The much easier option is to use Ideate Explorer for Revit. Inside Ideate Explorer for Revit you’ll be able to locate the link with just one click of the View pull down and change the filter to Instance List. Your link will be in the Results list. In the Details you’ll see the ID, but you don’t need that now because all you need to do is Right Click on Category in the Results are and click Show Elements and there is your lost link.

Want to learn more of Ideate Explorer for Revit? We invite you to check it out at www.ideateexplorer.com

Lana Gochenauer, LEED AP,
MEP Solutions Application Specialist
Lana has a wealth of real world experience, having used Autodesk products on projects from hospitals to universities, restaurants to corporate office headquarters, from strip malls to tenant fit-up. Most recently she focused on coordination drawings/models with MEP contractors, and fabrication from the model. Lana successfully ran her CAD business and worked as the CAD manager for an international MEP engineering firm in Seattle. Lana is a Certified Autodesk Trainer and NECA certified electrical estimator. Currently pursuing her MBA in Sustainability and based in the Ideate ATC in Seattle, Lana provides training and services for AutoCAD MEP, Autodesk Revit MEP and Autodesk Navisworks. @LanaGMEP

Get it. Know it. Use it.

Purging is a question we get at Ideate all the time.

Who’s afraid of the big bad purge button?

I was! When I started my first Revit MEP project, I was still waiting to get trained formally and I thought “How different can it be from AutoCAD MEP?” Not realizing that the files in Revit are going to be larger than my AutoCAD files, I wanted to get the file size down. What do we do in AutoCAD? Purge. So, I did, much to my dismay. This event so traumatized me that I never again hit the purge button.

For years I would clean my files by removing unused views and limiting .dwg files, but never the purge command. That was silly, but we all have developed avoidances from things we’ve done in our life.

Well, yesterday I ventured back into the purge command in Revit MEP 2012. I could actually feel my blood pressure rising as I moved my mouse the purge button. “Am I going to make a mess of this file?” kept running through my head. Then, the dialog box popped up and it didn’t look anything like what I remembered.

The dialog box allowed me to Select None and the pick the elements that I was sure I no long needed.

File maintenance has its own workflow. Check for unused views (sections and 3D views are the biggest culprits), check for .dwgs (Ideate Explorer for Revit can help), and I now will use the Purge command in the Manage tab without any heart palpitations.

Lana Gochenauer, LEED AP,
MEP Solutions Application Specialist
Lana has a wealth of real world experience, having used Autodesk products on projects from hospitals to universities, restaurants to corporate office headquarters, from strip malls to tenant fit-up. Most recently she focused on coordination drawings/models with MEP contractors, and fabrication from the model. Lana successfully ran her CAD business and worked as the CAD manager for an international MEP engineering firm in Seattle. Lana is a Certified Autodesk Trainer and NECA certified electrical estimator. Currently pursuing her MBA in Sustainability and based in the Ideate ATC in Seattle, Lana provides training and services for AutoCAD MEP, Autodesk Revit MEP and Autodesk Navisworks. @LanaGMEP

Get it. Know it. Use it.

Large projects can be difficult to navigate - but not with Ideate Explorer! We’ve added two significant improvements to Ideate Explorer 2012: Speed and Access to Worksharing information.

We’ve re-engineered our search engine to make Ideate Explorer 2012 at least two times faster than the previous version. A 280 MB file now takes around one minute to index all objects. Finding the objects you need has never been easier.

Now, in version 2012, Ideate includes Workset data. In this image, the Keyword Search is being used to show all the items with the word “curtain” and on Level 6. When the first instance of Curtain Wall 1 is selected, the properties panel shows the new fields for both Workset and Edited by (only if it’s a worksharing enabled project).

Sorting your project by Workset is sure to become another critical project auditing methodology. With the new View drop-down option to organize by Workset you can easily scan the contents of each Workset and find objects that have been misplaced. In this screenshot, for example, we can see that several items have been mistakenly placed within our Links and Shared Level worksets.

To fix this problem using Ideate Explorer:

Select the checkbox next to each incorrect instance
Exit Ideate Explorer
Using Revit Properties palette, switch the Workset parameter to Workset1 or other appropriate Workset choice.

Ideate Explorer lets you easily search your Revit project for hard to find elements so that you can quickly make the edits you need. Ideate Explorer is the number one tool for auditing Revit projects and nipping them in the bud.

Check out the What’s New video for Ideate Explorer 2012 on YouTube or on Screencast.

Learn more at ideateexplorer.com.

Glynnis Patterson,
N.C.A.R.B. – Director of Services
Glynnis is a Registered Architect and has worked within the BIM industry since 1998. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, she has worked as an architect, educator and construction site manager. Glynnis is currently the Director of Development Services at Ideate, Inc. and continues to work with AEC clients across the nation, developing, and implementing best practices solutions. In her spare time Glynnis is a member of the Morristown Environmental Commission and builds Lego projects. @GVPinNJ

Get it. Know it. Use it.

Question: Is it possible to schedule the ‘Area’ property of filled regions in Revit?

Answer: Not without using Ideate BIMLink!

Ideate BIMLink very easily allows you to extract the area information of filled regions into a Microsoft Excel spread sheet that can be used for a variety of tasks such as representing different material areas on site plans, to trace shaded areas on a façade through the day and year to derive shading percentages for a PV calculator, to document repair and replacement areas on building elevations of a renovation or historic preservation projects, basically any task requiring quick calculation of custom building areas.

For more information about Ideate BIMLink and to download a free trial go to: www.ideatebimlink.com

Going to the Revit Technology Conference? Stop by our booth to learn more about Ideate BIMLink and Ideate Explorer.

Shruti Harve,

LEED AP, AEC Solutions Application Specialist
Shruti holds a Master of Science degree in Architectural Computing from University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom and is LEED accredited. Her experience includes working in Architecture and Construction firms in India and the United Kingdom as well as Structural Engineering firms in the Bay Area providing design, 3D modeling and drafting services. At Ideate, Shruti provides training and support for Revit Architecture, Revit Structure, 3ds Max, Ecotect and AutoCAD Architecture.

Get it. Know it. Use it.

We’re excited to release a new iteration of Ideate BIMLink 2011 today (2011.3 officially) which has several new features and fixes, most of which came from user requests and input.

New 2011.3 Features:

Generic Annotations: We’ve added support for General Annotation objects. Thanks to our valued AEC users for this request! Why would you care? Generic Annotations can be used in many different ways. Generic Annotations are often scheduled via Note Blocks for use as Demo Notes, Construction, and Renovation Notes but are also used in many creative ways to manage other data that needs to be in the model. Now with Ideate BIMLink you can edit the related text notes quickly in Excel and push the data back into your model. (Ryan Duell has a nice post and video on how to use Note Blocks.)

Swap Materials: Material parameter values are no longer read-only and can be imported if the value matches that of an existing material in the Revit project. Why would you care? If you are managing lots of custom FFE content and including material-based parameters, then this new feature will be a tremendous timesaver. Here’s a quick screencast demonstrating this functionality. Note that in addition to letting you Swap Materials, Ideate BIMLink also gives you access to all the Materials themselves so they can be quickly renamed to assist with project organization.

New 2011.3 Improvements:

Material parameters now display as the material name instead of the associated element id.
Material parameter values are no longer read-only and can be imported if the value matches that of an existing material in the Revit project.
Schedule key parameters now display as the schedule key value instead of the associated element id.
When previewing an import, the Excel cell is now reported for all Import Issues.
Import now treats the empty value ("" or 0) and the 'null' value as different values when importing parameters. Groups that contain objects that are not being edited by Ideate BIMLink will no longer report that they are being changed. Thanks to our valued users for reporting this issue.
Shared and Project Parameters now report for Materials. Thanks to our partners in Australia, AEC Systems for bringing this one to light.

And lastly, regarding the Ideate BIMLink and Ideate Explorer 2012, we’ll be posting soon to let you know what we’re planning but in the mean time, we’ve launched a new support page where you can log a feature request online. For now, I’ll only say that we are removing the requirement for having the Extensions Manager installed for the 2012 version. Let us know what you’d like to see in the upcoming versions of Ideate BIMLink and Ideate Explorer!

You can find more information about Ideate BIMLink and how it is being used by following us on: Twitter, this blog, YouTube and of course Ideate’s BIMLink website at ideatebimlink.com. In addition, don’t forget to download Ideate Explorer to further enhance your Revit BIM experience; ideateexplorer.com.

Last month Glynnis Patterson and I presented at the Seattle Revit User Group, SeaRUG. Our topic of discussion was the increasing need to quality control/quality check Building Information Models. More and more we’re seeing our customers continuing to push BIM and Revit further. Larger, more sophisticated, and advanced building information models are being created; and as a result, these models are gradually included in the deliverables in addition to the 2D documentation required for typical projects. More and more Building Information Models are being used by construction managers, estimators, fabricators and facilities management. Therefore the accuracy of these models is more important than ever before.

Simultaneously other areas of the industry are also recognizing this need as well. With the arrival of the AIA Document E202 BIM Model Protocol and the Construction Operations Building Information Exchange (COBie) the foundation is being laid to standardize and regulate the collaboration between all parties involved in the design, construction and management within a BIM project and beyond.

We’ve begun to see our customers spending an increasing amount of time managing these data rich models whether it’s for performance reasons or ensuring accurate data. To address this need we offer the Ideate Health Check.

One of the tools we use extensively for our Ideate Health Check is the Autodesk Revit Model Review. This tool is available through the Autodesk Subscription Center as part of the Revit Extensions for Revit Architecture, Revit Structure and Revit MEP. Once downloaded it’s installed under the Add-Ins tab in the ribbon.

The Revit Model Review Utility allows you to review the contents of a Revit model and linked models against your established firm/project standards, produce a detailed report and in some cases even allow you to fix the inaccuracies. The utility uses Check Files based on a multitude of parameters and filters. The utility includes several pre-built Check Files to review everything from model contents and naming conventions to energy modeling.

One of the most useful check files included with the utility is the GSA Autodesk Check. For anyone who has worked on a GSA project you know how important it is to follow their established standards. The GSA Autodesk check file is designed to be run at regular intervals throughout the life of the project; and used to review the contents of the Revit model so that it is up-to-date with current GSA Standards. It reviews items such as GSA Occupant Organization Names, Room Names, STAR Space Types/Categories, Security Zones and Preservation Zones as outlined in the GSA National 3D-4D-BIM Program. Using the the Model Review Utility coupled with the Autodesk GSA Revit Template is a quick and efficient way to manage GSA projects in Revit; ensuring all content is up-to-date with GSA Standards.

In addition to the pre-built Check Files that are included with the Revit Model Review we’ve created several of our own. They’re designed to be run quickly, yet pull detailed information from the model. One of my favorites is the Ideate Health Check_In Place Families Check File. A common mistake we see Revit users make is the use of in place families. In place families are intended to be used for unique “one time occurrence” elements, are unable to reference shared information as do regular families and can lead to performance issues. For more information take a look at the Autodesk Revit Model Performance Technical Note. It’s a great reference document Autodesk created in 2010. It goes into depth and offers best practices when working with Revit.

When we run our In Place Families Check and we see multiple instances of an in place family it tells us this object should really be created as regular family. Take a look below.

The Family Pavilion is copied eight times within this one project. I would use the Select By ID tool in the Manage tab and determine if these Pavilions are legitimate objects used in the model or if they were copied accidentally. If they are being used then I recommend creating this object as a true .rfa family.

We also use the Revit Model Review to quickly pick out case sensitive text. We built our Ideate Health Check_TextCaseFix Check File to quickly assess which annotative text, room/space name text and view text need to be changed to upper case or lower case. The best part of this Check File is Model Review will fix the text for you! You don’t have to manually search through the project selecting and editing the text. This is a huge timesaver! The screenshot below shows the results after running the check. Notice the “magic wand” icon under the fix column. Clicking the “magic wand” will fix all of the Room Names in the entire project that are in lower case or mixed to upper case in a matter of seconds. Awesome!

I highly recommend downloading and installing the Autodesk Model Review. It can be an indispensable tool to quickly assess your model and fix potential issues. When used in conjunction with Ideate Explorer for Revit and Ideate BIMLink, Autodesk Model Review allows you to produce increasingly data rich models while keeping them lean and manageable.

Is your project feeling a little under the weather? Contact Ideate, Inc. about a Health Check: 888.662.7238 or consulting@ideateinc.com.

Derek Wielkopolski
Technical Support Manager/Application Specialist
Derek holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Roger Williams University, Rhode Island. He is experienced working within the AEC industry from concept design through construction administration for both small and large scale projects. As Ideate’s Support Manager he ensures a timely and quality response to support requests and questions. Follow Derek on Twitter: @dwielk

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New Year's Resolution - Cleanup those RVTs!

Ideate Explorer for Revit - Auditing Key Notes

Searching for Specific Content with Ideate Explorer for Revit

Rogue Levels in Revit?

It Once Was Lost But Now It’s Found

Revit - To Purge or Not to Purge?

What's New in Ideate Explorer for Revit 2012

Scheduling Areas of Filled Regions: Ideate BIMLink Can Do That!

New Features for Ideate BIMLink 2011 and the Inside Scoop on Version 2012

Ideate Health Check - QC for Your BIM, Part 2

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